No one can order a feeling. Emotions simply are too liquid to be held to that solid demand. So the first thing we have to get through our head is that love, heavenly love, the love Jesus practiced and demands of ALL followers, cannot be measured by feeling, justification, explanation or the most horrid of all hateful expressions, “I did it for your own good.”

Love, then, is not the affection we feel for those we like, nor is it a comfort we feel when with people who are like us, nor is it a passion for a thing or an event.

Love is when we get out of the way and let Jesus send signals of divine compassion to those we find repugnant. Love arises to view only when we consciously admit we are not god-like and cannot be of generous spirit like God, and so we obey Jesus despite the extreme inconvenience of heavenly love on our ego, and act generously in a situation where humans would act with disdain or violence of thought or action.

We don’t just feed our feelings. We obey Jesus, whether we feel like it or not.